Thursday, May 21, 2015

Free Tanya McDowell

I wrote the following blog three years ago. Tanya McDowell has just been sentenced to three years in prison. The article appeared in the Daily Mail that is published in Britain. I don't know of any media source that has covered McDowell's recent sentence.

Tanya McDowell is a homeless
mother who sent her son to a public Norwalk, Connecticut school while living in
Bridgeport.The authorities in Norwalk
felt that this was a crime.As a result,
a Norwalk court sentenced McDowell to twelve years in prison and she has been
fined $6,200.McDowell happens to be
Black.

The idea of sending a mother to
prison for sending her son to a public school appears to be
incomprehensible.However, the court
decision sending McDowell to prison took place in a nation that claims to
represent “liberty and justice for all.”In order to understand the background to this case, we need to look at a
bit of history.

The history of the struggle against discrimination

The heroic struggle to free the
people of the United States from Jim Crow segregation is known throughout the
world.The Civil Rights movement
effectively forced the Supreme Court to make its decision of Brown vs. the
Board of Education Topeka.This decision
ruled that the idea of separate but equal, or segregated education is illegal.However, this decision only applied to
students living in a particular school district.Today, education continues to be segregated
when we compare many inner cities to the suburban communities.This is the problem that Tanya McDowell faces
today.

The Census Bureau lists the
Norwalk, Stamford, Bridgeport, Connecticut metropolitan area as the 13th
most segregated metropolitan area in the nation.Typically this means that educational
facilities are funded at a much higher rate in the suburban areas than in the
inner cities.

Philadelphia is rated as the
ninth most segregated metropolitan area in the nation.Per student funding for education in
Philadelphia is about $11,000 per year and about 90% of the school population
is Black or Latino.When we cross the Philadelphia
border at City Line Avenue, we enter the Lower Merion School District where per
student funding for education is about $22,000 and about eighty to ninety
percent of the student population is Caucasian.

Tanya McDowell and the struggle against discrimination

Tanya McDowell has a more
consistent view of the educational system in this country than the Supreme
Court.McDowell understands that
segregated educational facilities are not equal.While the judicial system allows gross
disparities in the funding of education, McDowell took a different
approach.She used the address of her
babysitter, Ana Rebecca Marques, to register her son in a Norwalk school while
she lived in Bridgeport.

The authorities in Norwalk
charged Tanya McDowell with stealing $15,000 in educational services from the
district.The housing authority in
Norwalk evicted Ana Rebecca Marques from her so-called public housing for
providing the documents that allowed McDowell’s son to go to school in the
district.Twenty-six other students have
been thrown out of Norwalk’s so-called public schools for similar reasons.

When we consider the charge that
Tanya McDowell stole money from the Norwalk School District, we might consider
a few facts.The historical facts are
that huge amounts of money were effectively stolen from Black people during
slavery, Jim Crow segregation, as well as the legalized discrimination we see
today.This theft was, and continues to
be perfectly legal and, to the best of my knowledge, no one ever went to prison
for stealing this money.To the contrary,
some of the most lucrative financial enterprises have reaped enormous profits
from this discrimination.

The Mayor of Norwalk, Connecticut
is Richard A. Moccia.His daughter,
Suzanne Vieux, is the District Attorney who prosecuted Tanya McDowell.These politicians have a similar outlook as
the top government officials, which include President Barack Obama.These officials understand that there is
blatant segregation in the educational system in this country and they have
decided to do nothing about it.To the
contrary, they advocate for horrendous cutbacks that have made the disparity in
educational funding even more dramatic.

The Connecticut Parent’s Union,
and the NAACP have given their support to Tanya McDowell.There was also a petition with 15,600
signatures that also supported her fight to avoid incarceration.

Gwen Samuel, who heads the
Connecticut Parent’s Union, had this to say as to why she supports Tanya
McDowell:

“She [McDowell] understands
something about the importance of education…I’m disappointed and I’m scared…
I’m afraid of a system that would rather arrest me for being a good parent than
help me raise my child to be a productive citizen.”

This is an election year.Politicians routinely rant and rave about the
importance of education.All of these
arguments will amount to nothing more than a lot of gibberish if these
politicians refuse to say the words: Free Tanya McDowell.

About Me

I am the author of the novel "Looking Back From 2101." My novel imagines a future world where poverty and discrimination are no longer a part of the human condition. My blog contains articles and poems that I've written over the years. Many of my poems are biographies of historical figures who I have found to be inspiring.